Jin Shan 金闪

Jin Shan’s video works mix order and accident, in part, he says, because definitive statements make censorship easier. In Untitled—Animals Attack Humans (2013), he combines found videos of animal attacks on humans into a single chaotic sequence. Choppily edited and deliberately blurred, the video bypasses logic, speaking directly to the emotions with a nightmarish impression of brutality, confusion and fear. For the artist, the work is an allegory—both visual and visceral—of the struggle that is everyday life in contemporary China. Untitled—Suicide Video, 1990 (2013) is based on a YouTube video of a man leaping from a tall building. Jin Shan cuts away the background, leaving only the blurred figure, who—twisting as he falls frame by frame to the ground—might almost be performing a gym routine.